The invention relates to a profile cutting tool, which has at least one profile blade appropriately extending in a longitudinal direction and which forms two or more juxtaposed cutting projections or between the latter cutting depressions extending in the longitudinal direction, so that the overall profile of the profile blade can be imaged on a planar, curved or similar workpiece surface by metal removing or similar machining.
Particularly if the profile blade has cutting edges at least partly formed from a homogeneous material or not by a single grain size, they appropriately define a blade front surface, a blade back surface and lateral flanks of the cutting projections or depressions. The front and back surfaces are then in a clearly defined cutting angle to one another in cross-section through the cutting edge or transversely to the main longitudinal direction thereof, whilst the back surface can define a clearance angle relative to the workpiece surface and the front surface a positive or negative setting angle relative to said workpiece surface. The said angles are dependent on the material to be worked, the material of the profile blade, the cutting speed, the surface characteristics to be produced and the like.
In order to e.g. simultaneously produce several juxtaposed grooves, which optionally pass into one another continuously through an advance movement, such as the individual thread elements of a single or multiple thread, use can be made of a corresponding profile tool and the latter can be gradually brought into engagement with the workpiece as a result of the advance roughly parallel to the main longitudinal direction. Thus, the furthest forward cutting projection in the advance direction takes on the most important work, so that the following cutting projections have to do less cutting. As a result of the increasing lower construction of the cutting projections in the direction of the furthest forward cutting projection this disadvantage can be reduced, but the cutting projections only gradually engage with the workpiece due to the advance movement, so that long operating times occur.
This can be counteracted in that the workpiece is simultaneously brought into the working area of two or more cutting projections or cutting depressions, which can have roughly the same profile height, by an in-feed at right angles to the main longitudinal direction of the cutting edge or to the advance movement or to the working or cutting movement at right angles thereto. However, said projections and depressions simultaneously engage with the workpiece, which causes a sudden loading of the corresponding portion of the profile blade or the entire blade. This is particularly the case with those tools which, unlike in the case of profile drills, such as tap drills, are not uniformly circumferentially in engagement with the workpiece and instead in the same way as a peripheral cutter, a gouging profile tool or the like during each operating cycle, e.g. during each rotation, are out of engagement over a larger path and in engagement with the workpiece over a smaller path until the machining is ended on terminating a large number of operating cycles as a result of the advance movement and/or an in-feed. An advance movement is also mainly directed roughly identically or oppositely to the cutting direction, depending on whether conventional or non-conventional cutting is taking place.